


Complicated

by deedeeinfj



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 18:24:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deedeeinfj/pseuds/deedeeinfj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inara chooses for herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Complicated

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2005.

Inara smiles with true feeling when Kaylee sits in the shuttle and describes in exuberant detail what Simon said to her, how he brushed her hair back from her face before he kissed her, how wonderful the orange tasted – the one he gave her yesterday, that he paid an arm and a leg for. Inara smiles and encourages and lives vicariously; envy, like so many of the feelings that threaten her, is too complicated.  
  
Kaylee crosses her legs and leans forward, her adorable grin lighting the room far more than Inara’s expensive candles could ever do. “What was the best kiss you ever got?” she asks. “The most romantic one?”  
  
How can Inara reply that she knows little of romance? In Kaylee’s eyes, she is exotic, a woman who knows everything about men and love. In fact, she knows much of one, and almost nothing of the other.  
  
“I don’t know,” she answers, still smiling. She takes a sip of tea, flattening her palm against the cup to feel its warmth.  
  
“Clients’ privacy and all that?” Kaylee sighs, looking disappointed.  
  
Inara lowers her gaze, then meets Kaylee’s again. She imagines how wonderful it would feel if she finally told the truth.   
  
“When I was a girl,” she says, “my best friend kissed me. It was next to my dollhouse. I was eleven.”  
  
Kaylee tilts her head to the side. “Really? Everywhere you’ve been, everyone you’ve met...”  
  
“Everyone else has paid me.”  
  
Her reply hangs starkly between them. Kaylee’s face falls, and she reaches for Inara’s hand. Inara looks away, then suddenly remembers another kiss.  
  
“Actually, there was one more,” she says slowly.  
  
Kaylee glows. “Was it romantic?”  
  
“Not really.” Inara tries to smile. “It was Mal.”  
  
“Mal?” Kaylee repeats. “But—what do you mean?”  
  
Inara tells her about the night Saffron had tried to take over the ship. What had really happened, from the lurch of her heart at Saffron’s triumphant “Malcolm Reynolds’ widow,” to Mal’s idiocy at the end of it all.  
  
“I’ve never understood...” Kaylee trails off and pauses. “Why...”  
  
“It’s complicated,” Inara sighs. How often has she said that? The word is almost funny to her now. “I would have to leave the Guild. I would have no respect, no income. I wouldn’t have the money to rent this shuttle.”  
  
Kaylee lifts her chin. “Then don’t rent the shuttle, Inara. There’s plenty you could do to help with jobs. Just think of it. You can fight. You talk proper. We could use you! And then... maybe... Well, I was just thinkin’ maybe that way you can get what you want.”  
  
Heavy footsteps scuffle into the door. “And what is it she wants?” Mal hooks his thumbs in his pockets and grins. “Anything for the Ambassador.”  
  
Inara stands and clothes her nervousness with irritation, as she usually does. “I don’t recall inviting you to my shuttle,” she says coldly.  
  
Mal’s grin doesn’t fade. “Awww, what’s that between friends?” He crosses his arms. “Anyhow, I come to tell you we’ll be swingin’ by Ariel in a few days. Just a couple hours, but I conjure that’s plenty enough time for you to work your magic on some unsuspectin’ rich boy.”  
  
“Good gracious, I just remembered I have to go!” Kaylee hops up unconvincingly and says cheerily as she disappears, “See ya, Inara! Cap’n!”  
  
Inara breathes in deeply and holds her shawl closer. Her bare shoulders feel cold, while her face is hot. “Mal, there’s a matter of business we need to discuss.” She sits and stares at her abandoned cup of tea. She swallows. “You should know that I... I won’t be renting this shuttle any longer.” She looks up and finds that Mal is frowning at her, his arms still crossed. “Are you going to say anything, or shall I assume—”  
  
“Don’t assume nothing.” He strides over and sits down. “You leavin’ us again?”  
  
Inara wonders if he can hear her heart pounding. The silky fabric of her dress suddenly seems so flimsy, so thin. She wonders what the others at the Guild would think of her if they could see her now, nervous and unsteady before a man. As if she’d had no training at all. She raises her chin and folds her hands in her lap.  
  
“That will be up to you,” she replies. “As I said, I will not be renting this shuttle. With your permission, however, I would like to continue serving as a member of this crew.” Emotion floods into her voice as she adds, “I don’t want to leave  _Serenity_.”  
  
“I don’t rightly know what to make of this,” Mal says. “What are you aimin’ to do with all your money?”  
  
She takes a moment to breathe. “I won’t have any money, Mal.”  
  
He laughs uncertainly. “I’m more confused than Jayne in a... well, Jayne in any place. What are you sayin’?”  
  
“I’m saying that I’m leaving the Guild. It will be a respectable withdrawal, just a few technicalities. If you have a place for me on  _Serenity_  still, I’m willing – hoping – to stay.”  
  
Inara meets his eyes and sees, somehow, that he understands what she is telling him. She holds a corner of her shawl, twisting it in her fingers, waiting for him to say something.  
  
He does, finally: “Why?”  
  
“I love this ship. You know I do. All my friends—”  
  
“That’s not what I meant,” he interrupts. “Why are you leavin’ the Guild?”  
  
She knew before what he was asking, but she had bought a few seconds to think before she replied. She looks down again. “Because I think it might be time for me to have some of the things I want. Things I couldn’t have if I didn’t leave the Guild.”  
  
“And what might those things be?”  
  
“I think you know, Mal.” She blinks away the sting in her eyes. Remembering what he told her that night, she laughs in spite of herself and manages to say, “How’s about we don’t play?”  
  
Inara hardly knows what happens next, what looks and words are exchanged, because they are meaningless. Mal has one hand on her upper arm, the other on her neck, and he’s kissing her just as she imagined he would, as if she were the long-awaited backup in Serenity Valley. She feels her shawl slipping from the crooks of her elbows as she reaches out to hold on to him, but it hardly matters. She isn’t cold anymore. She feels warm and alive and reckless, well aware of what her family would think if they could see their crown jewel flinging herself over a cliff and into the arms of a Browncoat smuggler. The fall is exhilerating.  
  
She remembers telling clients that she chose them, and realizes now how little of the choosing was hers to do. This,  _this_  is what she chooses. For the first time in many years, she feels that she has made a decision for herself.  
  
With his familiar self-deprecating laugh, Mal draws back a little. “I feel like I got a lot to live up to,” he says.   
  
“You don’t,” Inara replies. She fingers the buttons on his shirt, focusing her eyes on them as if she’s never seen buttons. “You’re the first.”  
  
He laughs again and opens his mouth to say something, but Inara stops him with her hand. He’d only say something rude and stupid, anyway. She doesn’t want that. They’ll have plenty of opportunities, and she knows it. She almost looks forward to it.  
  
“I mean that you’re the first I’m taking for myself.” Her eyes trail up from his buttons to his face.   
  
“Taking?” he repeats. “I dunno what impression I gave you, Miss, but I’m not someone you can just up and  _take_.”  
  
“I’m serious, Mal,” she says quietly. “And I want you to know that this can’t happen right away.” She reaches for the fallen edge of her shawl and drapes it back over her arm, then folds her hands in her lap. “My withdrawal from the Guild must take place with nothing untoward, nothing suspect.”   
  
It sounds too cold and formal, nothing like what is taking place in her pounding heart. Does he understand what she is giving up for him? And if he does understand, does he also know that she doesn’t care about any of it?  
  
“Woman,” he says, and she braces herself for something... Mal-ish. Something she will gladly ignore, just this once. She waits for it, but there’s nothing else. Maybe he couldn’t think of anything, or maybe he decided not to say it.  
  
It’s when they’re kissing again, slowly this time, that he says it: “Don’t ever leave  _Serenity_ , you hear?”  
  
Inara smiles against his mouth and memorizes everything about the moment, from his arm securely around her waist to his surprising gentleness. Her life has become complicated, and she finds that she prefers it that way.


End file.
